JR (14 page)

—We have to, we owe…

—We? That last time they hauled the car in? She looked up to catch him in the mirror but he clung to a shoulder strap. —Or the time before, every time. Is that we?

—No I didn't mean, what I meant, I meant to ask you, do you remember that last towing charge? how much it was?

—Fifty cents? something… ow!

—It couldn't have been that little, it …

—So maybe it was four fifty, six fifty, I distinctly remember the fifty cents Nora, stop it! What in God's name are you doing? Nora! Can't you stop them? Instead of standing in here arguing about fifty cents? This thing you have about money you have a real thing about it. The way you plunge the house into darkness the minute you walk in going around turning off all the lights, turning down the heat every time you pass it, fifty cents! You get a break you're scared to keep it, like that tax refund for three hundred dollars, and you send it back.

—Daddy! Dad… !

—No, it was three hundred twenty thirty-six and the refund I filed for was only thirty-seven ten so I couldn't…

—Quick, a penny! Gimme another penny quick!

—I couldn't keep it, and I couldn't just…

—Quick!

—What for, Nora?

—Quick. Donny is this machine which I have to put a penny in him to make him go, to make it go.

—What it would have done to their records if I'd cashed it, what kind of machine?

—A jumping machine. Didn't you hear it? Quick I have to put in another penny before he runs out.

—Wait! Wait a minute, to put in where? What do you mean another penny, where!

—In his mouth, this penny I found on your dresser it … wait! Wait… ! What are you … what are you doing to him? Look out, you'll break him! You'll… upside down, he'll… Mama! Mama!… There, see? I told you!

—Well, don't… don't step in it! Get a rag. Donny! Come here, don't

touch your mother's…

—My God! and all over my sari! Let go, let me go! Nora, take him!

Can't one of you take him? The smell will never come out. Don't just stand there Nora! Get a rag!

—Daddy, I got your penny back. Here…

—A rag I said, don't wipe it on your dress! And look at my sandals! she got past them, rounded the corner and shook the bathroom door.

—Dad! Are you in there? A rude sound responded promptly from within, and here she came again. —All of you! You're all against me, all of you… !

The side door banged. Somewhere a clock with a broken chime had a try at striking the hour, and Mister diCephalis hurried to the telephone resetting his watch, to dial and stand looking out the window at something his wife had said was a snowball bush hidden openly against others as shapeless as they were nameless she'd said only needed trimming, ignoring the tug at his trouser leg, —See, Donny? Daddy's not mad, he just wanted his penny back… for the recorded remonstrance he listened to through to the end before lowering his eyes from that hostile spectacle of growth to dial again, and raise them again to his wife out there scrubbing her sari with water from the garden hose squatted like some Gan-getic laundress, numbed stare fixed on the remotely male privilege of the hunt as it prospered, here, past frilled ironwork made of aluminum to appear new and new lengths of post and rail treated to appear old, in the form of Bast near a gallop behind prey in a heedless trot more secure, with each step, in the protective drab of black patterned on gray, frayed, knotted, and unshorn in other details, as the intervals between bayberry keeping mown distance from mimosa alerted by Insurance, Chiropodist, This desirable property For Sale, God Answer's Prayer, gave way to depths

of locust long stunted in internecine struggle now grappling with woodbine, and the sidewalk itself finally disappeared under grass at the designated site by God's grace of an edifice for worship by the people of Primitive Baptist Church on a sign about to be reclaimed by the undergrowth.

—Stop!

—What?

—I said wait a minute… !

—No you said…

—Where's that money you, you stole.

—I what? Oh. Oh, hi.

—Where is it!

—In that paper bag, that? That was our class money.

—It was Miss, Mrs what's her name…

—Joubert, Mrs Joubert. That's my class, six J.

—Well where is it!

—The money? his shoulders hunched in the shift of books, a black zippered portfolio, a newspaper and mail in assorted sizes from one

arm to the other. —I told you, I had to hurry up to class from that rehearsal thing with it, he said stooping for a dropped envelope, pausing down there to add a knot to the lace in his sneaker. —You can ask her.

—You… you're sure?

—Sure ask anybody. Hey wait, I mean you're not mad are you hey? Books and papers threatening to right and left, he trotted up beside Bast. —Where you going.

—Home.

—Oh. You live out this way?

—Yes.

—Up the main road?

—Yes but …

—I'll walk you.

—I'm in a hurry.

—That's okay. He hurried along bumping Bast's thigh with his armload. —How far up do you live, past that big corner?

—Right off it.

—Like across from where they're building this here new shopping center, right?

—They're not building anything.

—I mean like where they're going to.

—Going to what. Who.

—You live in that big old place right after that old empty farmhouse if you turn left, right? This here old house with these little pointy windows and this like big barn in back by the woods? with this big high scraggly hedge out front like?

Bast's steps had slowed as a small clearing opened abruptly on their right where mangled saplings and torn trunks and limbs still bearing leaves engaged a twisted car fender, a split toilet seat, a chair with one leg and a variety of empty tin cans surrounding a sign Clean Fill Wanted with a telephone number. —How did you know that.

—That's the only place up there, right? And like right across from it where that guy that raises flowers which used to live in the farmhouse, where he has all those flowers that's where they're having this here new shopping center, you know?

—No. Who told you that.

—It's right in the paper here about the zoning change … and in his effort to keep stride and dig into that armload, everything went. —I… oh, thanks. You don't have to help me, I mean I just wanted to show you…

—Damn it!

—What. The mud? It brushes off when it gets dry. I just…

—Whose is all this? said Bast stooped, picking up Gem School of Real Estate, Amertorg International Trading Corp., Cushion-Eez Shoe Company, National Institute of Criminology, Ace Match Company, — this mail.

—It's today's. I just went to the post office.

—This is yours? your mail?

—Sure, you just send away, J R said without looking up from the skidding surfaces of the magazines he was pulling together, Success Secrets, Selling, Success, the abrupt appearance of a bared breast crowding a full page, —it's mostly free, you know? He gathered in the breast without a glance, and stood.

—What are those magazines? Bast said, staring.

—Just things where you get to send away, you know? Like I thought I had the town paper here but it's the wrong one, about zoning this improved property and all.

Bast stood slowly, cleared his throat muttering —improved! and kicked an empty catfood can at the twisted fender.

—Like all they need here is fill and they, hey wait up … J R dug in a pocket, came up with the handkerchief wad, the pencil stub. —They pay like seven dollars a yard for clean fill, you know hey? he said looking at the sign, scratching the pencil stub on a magazine margin. — Have you got a pencil?

—No, and here. Bast handed over the mail and turned away. —I'm in a hurry.

—But just, okay but sometime could we, hey… ? J R stood by the mangled clearing biting at the point of the pencil stub, trying it for a mark, biting again. —Hey Mister Bast? he called, and Bast half raised an arm without lifting his eyes from his lengthening steps toward the

main road opening ahead, where the voice barely reached him as he crossed its unkempt shoulder. —I just mean like maybe we can use each other some time, okay… ?

Pursuing nothing, unpursued, a police car appeared, sheared past him, its siren tearing the day to pieces out of sight beyond the firehouse and the crumbling plaza of the Marine Memorial behind him as he turned up the highway and crossed, stepping over ruts, tripping against cragged remnants of sidewalk in block lengths allotted by rusted poles still bearing aboveground indecipherable relics of street signs that had signaled a Venetian bent real estate extravaganza in the twenties, until even those limbs of rust lay twisted to earth and naked of any sign of place, of any suggestion of the tumbled column and decollated plaster Lion of St Mark's moldered smooth there in the high browned grass where he turned in, any memory at all but these weeds recalled by the aged as Queen Anne's laces lining ruts which led back into the banks of oak, no cars but those seeking seclusion for the dumping of outmoded appliances, fornication, and occasional suicide, and those far fewer and on foot who knew it for a back entrance to the Bast property.

—Those woods were filled with people that summer, 'twenty-five was it, Julia? or 'twenty-six? You recall Charlotte was just back from Europe, men dressed up in gondoliers' hats they actually had a gondola too, down at the creek at that little bridge. A white pitched bridge

going absolutely nowhere and how she laughed, she had just come from Venice.

—She stopped when she saw James out in the midst of it, selling waterfront lots to those poor people. They'd been brought out from town on special trains free.

—Waterfront… ?

—They were told it would be waterfront, Stella. With docks for ships coming in from Europe and canals like Venice, and they believed it.

—I don't think James tried to deceive them, Julia. James took it all as rather a lark.

—A lark? People losing their whole life's savings? Most of them had been domestics, they could hardly speak English.

—Is this Uncle James? here, in this hat? Stella asked absently, mirrored in the picture's glass, her back to them in a simple curve of gray tailored to the grave decline of her shoulders.

—No, James, James didn't put on one of those getups. The gondolier's hat and all the rest of it, none of that was his idea at all. He was simply selling lots on commission for Doc what was his name, when he went to jail…

—No, no, Anne. She means that picture over there, James in some sort of academic costume. An honorary something he got somewhere after that first performance of his …

—And where is he now?

—There's a card from him Stella, it's there on the mantel. A picture of a castle.

—This? with the corner cut off it? There's no way to know…

—James' hand is impossible to read. The only way we can write to him is to cut off the return address and paste it on to the front of a letter, and since we never really know where… there! Just hold still for a moment, Stella. Do you see it now, Julia? The resemblance to James?

—If she'd raise her chin a little. A little, perhaps, around the mouth but… is that a scar? Around the throat, it must be the light in here but it looks…

—Julia! I wouldn't…

—It's all right, said Stella, turning from them what might have become a smile to draw up her throat's long and gentle curve. —You see? It goes right around, she seemed to finish, and turned back to the photographs framed on the wall.

—It almost looks…

—You, you might want to wear a necklace, Stella. There was one that belonged to Charlotte, somewhere. Who did that go to Julia? the one with the…

—Oh, I don't try to hide it… she brought them forward with the dull calm in her voice. —The children in our apartment building, do you know what they say? That I'm a witch, that I can screw my head on and off. They think that this one comes off at night and I put on another…

—Stella! that's… you, you're a beautiful girl!

—One that would turn them to stone if they saw it, she went on, all they could see of her expression its movement in the glass, and then — there were beautiful witches after all, she finished with a slight tremor that might have been a laugh.

—What…

—What was it? An operation. Thyroid.

—It's a shame you… you've never had children, Stella. Children of your own, you and… oh, I can never recall his name.

—Whose.

—Why, your husband, Mister…

—Norman, oh, said Stella in the same dead calm, and then —And this? turned again to a picture. —Sitting at the piano beside Uncle James, this little boy. It's not Edward, is it?

—That? No. No, that's not Edward, no.

—Is it … anyone?

—It's… no, it's a boy. A boy James took in for lessons.

—Reuben? Stella turned abruptly, and stood there as the turn had left her, one foot cocked on a heel. —The boy he adopted?

—He didn't. James never adopted him. There. Do you see? the stories that get started?

—Yes, that Mister… this lawyer who was here. Prying and gossiping, trying to bring Reuben into things too, saying the adopted child has the same rights as the blood child and so forth, why…

—Here, his card's here somewhere. Cohen, here it is. You see? he said they'd left out the h. You would think he'd want to get new cards printed.

—Perhaps he doesn't care to spend the money. It might be cheaper just to change his name, you remember Father saying…

—Why your husband had to send him out here Stella, as though things weren't confused enough.

—I'm sorry I missed him. When Norman's secretary said he was coming out to see you and Edward and help clear things up …

—Clear things up? Waving his arms around, breaking furniture, tossing papers every which way? And his language!

—I'm sure that Norman never meant him to …

—Crystal clear but he couldn't speak simple English, unless you call profanity crystal clear. Be careful of that chair arm, he broke that too.

—Perhaps Edward can fix it, Julia.

—Yes he warned us against Edward, if you can imagine.

—But I'm sure Mister Coen didn't mean…